Amy's Robot

Janet Displays Her Super Bowls...if you catch my meaning. ++

Hm. I guess Janet got jealous of all the attention everybody else's boobs got at the Golden Globes last week.

There's all this discussion as to whether it was planned or not, but certainly it was at least planned by her and Justin, right? I mean, did she just happen to be wearing that big metal thing on her nipple? Don't get me wrong: I put mine on every morning before I go to work, but I thought that was just me.

Anyway, here's our pics and a movie. [I replaced the earlier video with a low-res Quicktime and a hi-res AVI. Other videos are widely available, but I was having trouble with them, so made my own.]

So nice nips, Janet, but I guess we're all left picking up the pieces and wondering what, if anything, does it mean? I guess whoever came up with the idea was thinking that occasionally certain things need to be done to shake up mainstream America's ideas about sexuality. Madonna in the 80s and Ellen's primetime kiss (and its attendant hype) seem to have accomplished this, but what MTV seems to be shooting for with the Janet thing and the Madonna/Britney kiss is an instantaneous shock to the system that achieves the same effect as months or years of exposure to other catalysts. But the impression that I'm left with is that stunts like this tend to commodify gender and sexuality more than they contribute to open-mindedness about it. Not to make too much of it, but another thing to consider is the racial undertones of a white man forcibly disrobing a black woman in front of an audience of millions. Many Americans can view the incident with some ironic detachment, but all I could think about this morning was the reaction of the teenagers I work with every day, and the message they got from the performance.

At the same time, Americans are a lot more sexually repressed than we admit ourselves to be, so maybe seeing Janet Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl does serve to dilute that repression a little bit. One thing to think about, maybe, is to what extent her (or should I say Justin's) gesture is a political, sexual, or corporate one.

ps. The streaker who showed up later had "Golden Palace . Com " painted on his body, which means that he was sponsored by the same gambling website responsible for porn star Britt*ny Skye's naked appearance at that golf tournament last year.

categories: Celebrities
posted by adm at 11:50 PM | #